Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein
greets Donald Rumsfeld, then special envoy of U.S. President
Ronald Reagan, in Baghdad on December 20, 1983. He gave him
a pair of golden cowboy spurs - a present from Reagan.

This meeting took place before
one of the most shocking war crimes since the second world war
- Iraq's 1988 gassing of the Kurds in Halabjah. This meeting
took place at a time when Iraq was first alleged to have used
chemical weapons, and it paved the way for an official restoration
of relations between Iraq and the US, which had been severed
since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

In March 1984, with the Iran-Iraq
war was in full swing, Rumsfeld was back in Baghdad for meetings
with the Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz. On the day of his
visit, March 24th 1984, UPI reported from the United Nations
that mustard gas laced with a nerve agent has been used on Iranian
soldiers.

Furthermore, in the same year,
the Reagan administration played a key role in the genocide
of the Kurd's and supplied the helicopters that Iraq used to
drop chemical weapons on them. In 1984, according to The LA
Times, the State Department in the name of increased American
penetration of the extremely competitive civilian aircraft market pushed
through the sale of 45 Bell helicopters to Iraq. The New York
Times later reported that Saddam transferred many, if not all
[of these helicopters] to his military.

It was Rumsfeld's trip to
Baghdad which opened of the floodgates during 1985-90 for lucrative
US weapons exports to Iraqi dictatorship - some $1.5 billion
worth - including chemical/biological and nuclear weapons equipment
and technology, along with critical components for missile delivery
systems.

In 1988, When Iraq attacked
Kurdish civilians with poisonous gas from Iraqi helicopters
and planes. US intelligence sources told The LA Times in 1991,
they believe that the American-built helicopters were among
those dropping the deadly bombs".

In the same year, the Chicago
Tribune Magazine listed among Rumsfeld's achievements helping
to reopen US relations with Iraq. The Tribune failed to mention
that this help came at a time when, according to the US State
Department, Iraq was actively using chemical weapons. How did
the U.S. end up so close to the Baathists in Iraq ? They backed
them in two coups in Iraq in 1963 and 1968.

CIA HELPS BAATH PARTY TO POWER IN 1963

There are many reasons why the US occupation forces
in Iraq do not want the deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hassu to have
a fair trial - and will seek to delay any such event for as long
as possible - especially until after the next US Presidential elections.
Many commentators believe that the main reason for this is the fact
that not only did the CIA first help install his Baath Party in
power in 1963, it separated Saddam right up until he turned against
his former masters with the invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

In 1957 at the age of 20 Hussein joined the Baath
Party - a movement founded by two Syrians in the early 1940s. It's
ideology combined elements of Arab nationalism, anti-imperialism
and socialism and were strongly opposed to the Iraqi Communist Party
- which was largest in the Arab world. Evidence suggests that Hussein
was already working as a CIA agent in 1958, and that he may well
have recruited by them in the previous year. There was no way the
the US or the U.K. was ever going to allow a popular and secular
Communist party to come to power - or allow any leftist government
in Iraq. 4 years earlier, in August 1953, the CIA and MI6 in operation
TPAJAX deposed the moderate Iranian government of Mohammad Mossadeq
and installed the brutal Shah dictatorship.According to The Secret
of the Iranian Coup, 1953:

The CIA extensively stage-managed the entire coup,
not only carrying it out but also preparing the groundwork for it
by subordinating various important Iranian political actors and
using propaganda and other instruments to influence public opinion
against Mossadeq.

If the CIA did this Iran in 1953 it makes sense to
me that they also did this in Iraq in 1963 - when they helped the
Baathists to power - the only difference being that they subordinated
various important Iraqi political actors - in this case the
Baathists - a right-wing political movement that was both anti-Communist
and anti-monarchist.

A military coup in 1958 coup brought to power Abd
al Karim Qassim. Hussein participated in a 1959 attempt to assassinate
Qassim. The assassins killed Qassim's driver and wounded Qassim,
but not fatally. One of the assassins was killed, and Hussein was
shot in the leg and got away.

After the botched assassination, Hussein had to flee
Iraq. He spent the next four years in the Lebanon, Egypt and Syria,
the only period he has lived outside Iraq. While Hussein was in
Beirut, the CIA paid for his apartment and put him through a brief
training course, former CIA officials said according to Richard
Sale writing for the United
Press. The agency then helped him get to Cairo, where
he attended law school in Cairo and is believed to have made frequent
visits to the U.S. embassy there, according to Eric Star writing
in Star Tribune on February 2nd 2003 (A
history of Iraq, the cradle of Western civilization).
Star writes that:

The Iraqi Baathists and the CIA had a common
interest in getting rid of pro-Soviet Qassim. Several authors believe
that Saddam was helping the CIA and the Baathists coordinate a coup.

The CIA's role in 1963 coup was "substantial."

The CIA were also closely involved when in 1963, the
Baathists overthrew Qassim. This time Qassim was killed him, but
the Baathists held power only briefly, setting off a period of coups
more instability in Iraq. Said K. Aburish, who worked with Hussein
in the 1970s, an author of "Saddam Hussein: The Politics of Revenge,"
has said that the CIA's role in the coup against Qassim was "substantial."
The coup resulted in the return of Hussein to Iraq - he was immediately
assigned to head the Al-Jihaz al-Khas, the clandestine Ba'athist
Intelligence organisation. As such, he was soon involved in the
killing of some 5,000 communists.

CIA agents were in touch with army officers who helped
in the coup, operated an electronic command center in Kuwait to
guide the anti-Qassim forces, and like in Indonesia in 1965, supplied
the conspirators with lists of people to be killed. A former senior
CIA official said: "It was a bit like the mysterious killings of
Iran's communists just after Ayatollah Khomeini came to power in
1979. All 4,000 of his communists suddenly got killed." Aburish
confirms this saying that

"The relationship between the Americans and the
Baath Party at that moment in time was very close indeed".

This is supported by Miles Copeland, a veteran CIA
operative, reported in the United Press that the CIA had enjoyed
"close ties" with Qasim's ruling Baath Party, just as it had close
connections with the intelligence service of Egyptian leader Gamel
Abd Nassar. In a recent public statement, Roger Morris, a former
National Security Council staff member in the 1970s, confirmed this
claim, saying that the CIA had chosen the authoritarian and anti-Communist
Baath Party "as its instrument."

Qassim had ignored warnings about the impending coup.
It was the involvement of the United States that secured his downfall
- he had taken Iraq out of the anti-Soviet Baghdad Pact, threatened
to occupy Kuwait and nationalized part of the foreign owned Iraq
Petroleum Company (IPC). We really had the wires crossed on what was
happening, James Critchfield, then head of the CIA in the Middle
East was reported as saying on The
Age website in Australia. We regarded it as a great
victory. Iraqi participants later confirmed American involvement.

We came to power on a CIA train, admitted Ali Saleh Sa'adi, the
Baath Party secretary general. CIA assistance also reportedly included
coordination of the coup from the inside the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad
as well as a clandestine radio station in Kuwait and "solicitation
of advice from around the Middle East on who on the left should
be eliminated once the coup was successful".

But the success for the Baathists was short-lived
- they were soon ousted and prominent Baathists were jailed. Hussein
went underground again, but was arrested and spent portions of 1964-66
as a political prisoner. He escaped and went back underground to
help plot the Baath Party's return to power.

THE CIA BRING SADDAM TO POWER IN 1968

Due to splits in the Baath party, and Hussein rose
quickly to the No. 2 position, behind his relative Ahmed Hassan
Bakr. In 1968, the Baathists seized power again - Hussein became
vice president and head of security services in the new regime,
serving under Bakr, and soon emerged as the real power behind the
throne.

Some writers claim that the CIA played a role in
the 1968 coup, as well. Roger Morris, a former State Department
foreign service officer who was on the NSC staff during the Johnson
and Nixon administrations, says the CIA had a hand in two coups
in Iraq during 1963 and 1968. According to David Morgan in his article
Ex-U.S.
Official Says CIA Aided Baathists CIA. First, Morris
said that Saddam Hussein was first recruited by the CIA in 1958 -" There's
no question - It was there in Cairo that (Saddam) and others were
first contacted by the agency." In 1968, Morris says, the CIA encouraged
a palace revolt among Baath party elements led by Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr,
who would turn over the reins of power to Hussein in 1979. "It's
a regime that was unquestionably midwived by the United States,
and the (CIA's) involvement there was really primary," Morris says.

King Hussein of Jordan attributed the success of the Iraqi Baath
Party in the late 60s entirely to the support it received from the
CIA, at the time heavily involved in fighting communism on all fronts
- especially in the Arab world.

Iraq's Deputy Chief of Army Intelligence Col. Abdel
Razaq Al Nayyef later said, "for the 1968 coup you must look to
Washington." Looking at the wider picture for why the CIA helped
the Baathists to power Anthony
LoBaido observed:

"Working with Saddam made sense to the CIA
on two important levels. Number one, he was not an Islamic fundamentalist
along the lines of the Iranian ayatollahs. Secondly, he was not
a communist and perhaps was an anti-communist."

There can be no doubt that the CIA and Baathists shared common aims
- and the evidence seems pretty conclusive that the CIA were involved
in the 1963 and 1968 coups. After backing Iraq during the war against
Iran (1980-88) - whilst also secretly supplying Iran with arms what
became know as the Iran Contra affair - the U.S. would finally fall
out with Hussein following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990. In
2003, after waging a relentess air war on Iraq - and a brutal sanctions
regime - the U.S. and the U.K. invaded Iraq - and captured Hussein
later that year - on the run, just like he had been in the 1950's
and 60's. The former CIA stooge is now believed to be held in U.S.
custody awaiting a show-trial in Bagdhad within the next two years.